Read The Helena Diaries - Trouble in Mudbug (Ghost-in-Law Series Novellas) for Free Online

Mudbug—Chapters Nine & Ten
     
    Wherein Helena prevents a disaster but still takes the blame
    Maryse got a phone call first thing that morning. I had to yell at her to get her to answer, but then I regretted doing it at all. The guy from the bank had a loud voice, and I could hear part of the conversation—enough to know that Maryse would figure out that I’d been sending the payments she gave me to the bank to be applied to her house and truck.
    I only insisted she repay the money I lent her to test her character. I never thought Hank’s screwups were her responsibility, but I needed to make sure I wasn’t making a mistake when I left her the land. Since I didn’t think she was in a position to appreciate my completely logical approach to choosing an heir, I hightailed it to my house to make sure Harold hadn’t returned. Plus, if I could figure out how to touch things, I planned on changing clothes.  
    Although I managed to stroll right through the wall and into the house, I was woefully unsuccessful at the clothes part. I spent the better part of thirty minutes grasping at air before giving up.  
    The more I thought about Maryse’s wreck and her remote living conditions, the more I worried. I decided to head back to her cabin to assess the physical threat level—I’d heard that on a military movie once but never had a good reason to use it. I was glad I’d finally found one. It sounded cool.
    I lucked out hitching rides to and from Maryse’s dock, and since I could walk through doors now, it meant I got to ride up front in the cab instead of sitting on fishing equipment in the truck bed. Maryse’s rental car was still at the dock, but her boat wasn’t docked at the island, so I assumed she’d used water transport this morning.  
    As I stepped off the dock to cross the bayou, I saw the door to her cabin open. I froze and stared as a man carrying a duffel bag stepped out, then slipped around the side and into the brush. He was wearing sunglasses and a hat, so I couldn’t make out his face from this far away. The tide swept me downstream, so I started jogging across and upstream. I needed to get a closer look at the man, whom I was certain had no business in Maryse’s cabin.
    I’d already pushed the boundaries of my jogging ability just getting to the island, but I sucked it up and went into overdrive, following the man into the trees. I saw movement through the brush and burst out of the trail that led to a cove on the back of the island, just in time to see him jump into a flat-bottom boat. He took off so fast that he sent a huge wave over the dock.  
    I strained to make out the license plate on the boat, or any other discerning characteristic, but it looked like every fishing boat in Mudbug. I stopped jogging and leaned over to catch my breath. Chasing him was no use. He had the motor at top speed and at the moment, I couldn’t have caught a tortoise.
    As soon as I could breathe normally, I hoofed it back up the trail to Maryse’s cabin and walked through the front door. Everything looked the same as it had that morning, but without the ability to open cabinet drawers, I couldn’t be certain that nothing was missing or even worse, that nothing new had been introduced. Someone had managed to poison me in my own brandy snifter—and despite Harold being the obvious choice, I still didn’t think it was him.
    Which led to a rather interesting and disturbing line of thought. If it wasn’t Harold, that meant either someone had found a way around my security system to deliver the poison cocktail, or it was someone who had been invited into my house. Neither option gave me the warm fuzzies.
    I stepped into Maryse’s bedroom, and that ragtag cat of hers sprang up from the bed and bounded out the window as if on fire, further cementing my belief that cats could see me. I scanned the tiny bedroom and bath, but again, didn’t see anything out of place.
    But I knew something was wrong.
    You know how people